Adle to Cut Your Stick

wine making

Both our previous gardens were fruitless being quite small. The new old house came with a range of fruiting plants and trees. We are learning as we go, reading, seeking advice from those more experienced but there is also a lot said for trial and error don’t you think?

The back wall of the potting shed catches the midday sun until the end of the day, and there grows a lovely thornless blackberry.

Just ready to ripen.

I did net them as best I could at this stage as the blackbirds were certainly eyeing them up but the wasps were an irritant that couldn’t be stopped. I suppose a fruit cage is the only way to reduce that. Anyhow, with courage we delved in despite them and managed to collect over a kilo of fruit. In to the freezer they went ready for making jam a bit later.

One of the most impressive inheritances is the grape vine outside the backdoor. My grandfather did have one himself that I believe rarely fruited. This one, on the other hand, has been spectacular.

Being new to fruit we weren’t entirely sure how to care for it so plenty of study was required. We learnt very little except how to prune the thing when it had reached it’s denouement and that plenty of watering was favourable. You can see that we have a pergola (I use the term loosely) frame supporting it. It is quite large being about 10 feet by 20 feet covering the whole patio area between the kitchen and the garage. You look down beneath it to the orchard so the dappled early morning sunshine is rather lovely first thing with the days first cup of tea.

May

Little baby grapes appear…

and starting to grow juicy and green and fat.

They pretty much stayed that way all August while everyone else was talking about grape theft by birds and total destruction by wasps. We didn’t seem to have this problem at all but they just weren’t ripening except those around the edge of the frame.

After some hmmming and harrring I decided to strip off some of the foliage and let more sunlight in. Holding your arms above your head whilst balanced precariously on a ladder for an hour at a time is not a pleasure. I was developing He-Man biceps which is not a good look for me however within a week the jolly little berries were rosying up a treat. Hooray!

And, what luck! We had accidentally timed it perfectly. Most of the wasps had gone and the birds, who had not seen the grapes all summer, just didn’t seem to notice them there. This gave us time to harvest most of the bunches over a few days and leave a few for wildlife to have.

What to do with all these grapes? The taste test resulted in squished up noses. The grapes did taste nice without their jackets so the decision was made to squeeze them. Mr Trug has had great success with sloe gin in the past so he was quite keen to attempt a little wine making. The juice was absolutely amazing. In fact it was unbelievably good. Lots of mmmmms and oooohs from anyone who tried some. If I had been more organised this year and planned for bottles and freezer space then I’d have kept some. Not to be this year but instead it was put through the fermentation process. This was not without it’s hazards where yeast was left in the sitting room by the fire to ferment with the lid on. Doh Mr Trug! It scared the life out of me when it exploded catapulting lid and foamy creamy clods up on to the ceiling narrowly missing the flat screen telly. I can still see the stain up there now.

The result was three demijohns of red, well, what shall we call it? Stuff.

Please excuse delightful peeling wallpaper post bathroom flood

Will it be a cheeky little red 2015 or a lot of cooking vinegar? We will have to wait and see.

The orchard was bulging this year with apples. Pears were leaner but not a bad crop overall. The previous owners had kindly labelled a map of the trees they did know and I spent quite a while in early summer labeling up the apple trees with tags.

Green tags.

I know, you’re shaking your head pitifully. True, with the trees in leaf it is virtually impossible to see the labels. They will be moved or replaced over the winter. Lesson learnt.

Sadly a lot of the apples made it on to the compost but we did store some in drawers in the garage each in their little paper pockets. All the good pears went in (Conference and Comice) too but we have struggled to keep them and most were thrown. A rethink next year on more cooking prep/freezer space.

Our favourite had to be the Worcester Pearmain. Delicious. So lovely to now take my own apples to work to eat. A little of home came with me for as long we had them to eat.

Of course, Mr T has had a go at cider making despite hating cider with a vengeance. I suspect this had something to do with episodes in his youth-hood. The apples were crushed with the tiniest apple press I have ever seen. Kindly lent to us by a friend (cheers Dave) but it could have been made for dollies. We moved on to the next size up (cheers Warren) but even that took a millennium to complete. The plastic barrel is now full and festering, I mean fermenting.

I am very pleased the apple collecting came to an end. Apples, apples apples, every weekend! But we did leave a good few lying around for the wildlife. Unnerving teeth marks could be seen chomped in to the flesh but I’m guessing that will be from the badgers and foxes plus maybe Fraiser the golden retriever who pops round on his morning patrol. Them rather than the Hounds of the Baskervilles I imagine lurk in the blackness out there once night falls.

Finally, we have the hazelnuts or cobnuts or filberts. Whatever takes your fancy. My mum and dad call them cobnuts and talk with real passion about them as part of their childhoods. We have quite a few hazels which were growing cobnuts and I promised dad some once they were ready to pick.

The squirrel spies had been listening. I patiently waited, following advice, for September to come round and for the little nuts in their wraps to start to brown. Then they were GONE! Just like that. Damn those pesky squirrels. They either ate them, chucked them about and ruined them or hid them. Occasionally a little stash turns up in the compost, under a pot etc.